Paul F. A. Bartha
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195325539
- eISBN:
- 9780199776313
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195325539.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Logic/Philosophy of Mathematics
This chapter selectively reviews computational theories of analogical reasoning from Evans, Gentner, Holyoak and Thagard, Ashley, Carbonell, and Hofstadter. While these theories provide insight into ...
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This chapter selectively reviews computational theories of analogical reasoning from Evans, Gentner, Holyoak and Thagard, Ashley, Carbonell, and Hofstadter. While these theories provide insight into the processes involved in analogical reasoning, many of them operate with a perceptual model of analogical reasoning and appear to neglect normative questions. It is argued that most of the computational theories do, at least implicitly, incorporate normative principles and that those principles need to be examined critically. In particular, the chapter takes a close look at Gentner's systematicity principle. It is alleged that systematicity per se neither produces nor explains the plausibility of analogical arguments.Less
This chapter selectively reviews computational theories of analogical reasoning from Evans, Gentner, Holyoak and Thagard, Ashley, Carbonell, and Hofstadter. While these theories provide insight into the processes involved in analogical reasoning, many of them operate with a perceptual model of analogical reasoning and appear to neglect normative questions. It is argued that most of the computational theories do, at least implicitly, incorporate normative principles and that those principles need to be examined critically. In particular, the chapter takes a close look at Gentner's systematicity principle. It is alleged that systematicity per se neither produces nor explains the plausibility of analogical arguments.
James A. Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- February 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199357789
- eISBN:
- 9780190675264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199357789.003.0013
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
The elementary particles of cognition are concepts. Simple, accurate association alone can be misleading. Cognitive concepts work as valuable cognitive data compression, for example, giving a set of ...
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The elementary particles of cognition are concepts. Simple, accurate association alone can be misleading. Cognitive concepts work as valuable cognitive data compression, for example, giving a set of related items the same class name: tables, chairs, birds. Cognitive concepts also contain internal structure with good and bad examples and have fuzzy edges. Concepts can be associatively linked in semantic networks to store and retrieve information. Cognition using networks is an active search process and need not require further learning to be useful. Low-level concepts can lead to the formation of higher level abstractions. An experiment by Deidre Gentner involves perception of identity in pairs of items; some pairs the same and some not. Seeing many identical pairs allows the abstraction of “identity.” The abstract relationship “identity” can then become more powerful than the details of any single example pair.Less
The elementary particles of cognition are concepts. Simple, accurate association alone can be misleading. Cognitive concepts work as valuable cognitive data compression, for example, giving a set of related items the same class name: tables, chairs, birds. Cognitive concepts also contain internal structure with good and bad examples and have fuzzy edges. Concepts can be associatively linked in semantic networks to store and retrieve information. Cognition using networks is an active search process and need not require further learning to be useful. Low-level concepts can lead to the formation of higher level abstractions. An experiment by Deidre Gentner involves perception of identity in pairs of items; some pairs the same and some not. Seeing many identical pairs allows the abstraction of “identity.” The abstract relationship “identity” can then become more powerful than the details of any single example pair.
